When I was a kid, my family took me to a drive-through “safari” somewhere up in Canada as part of our family vacation. During that safari, a big-ass monkey jumped on top of our car; as someone in the under-five age demographic, that was the most terrifying thing to ever happen to me. From that day on, I’ve carried an irrational fear that something will leap up onto the roof of my car while I’m driving. But that’s just me; what are your irrational driving fears?
I do want to clarify that, yes, I was definitely a child with a large imagination, but I was also definitely a child that watched a lot of horror movies at a very young age and grew up on heavy metal. The monkey jumping on the roof was scary because we couldn’t immediately see what had landed up there — but that fear never exactly went away because we did a lot of nighttime rural driving to “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson. I grew up just waiting for something to leap out of a cornfield and land on the roof.
But here’s the thing: I’m a grown-ass adult now. I know that no creature of the night will leap on my car. And yet sometimes, when I’m driving around in the dark, I start worrying that something is about to land on top of my Mazda, and that there will be nothing I can do about it.
I know better, but irrational fears don’t actually care about what you know — that is, after all, what makes them irrational. My mom has an irrational fear that any car she’s in will suddenly veer off any bridge it drives over and plunge into the depths below. My husband tends to listen for phantom noises that only he can hear. I also know of plenty of folks online who firmly believe that the EV revolution is designed as a conspiracy to make them give up their cool trucks.
We all have our irrational driving fears. Head down to the comments and tell me all about yours!